UN letter calls House report on Iran `dishonest'

September 15, 2006|By From Tribune news services.

VIENNA — A recent U.S. House of Representatives committee report is "outrageous and dishonest" in its assertions about whether Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons, a senior official of the United Nations nuclear watchdog has said.

The UN nuclear agency officials said Thursday that their concerns had echoes of their arguments with the Bush administration four years ago over reports that Iraq was producing weapons of mass destruction.

The charges were contained in a letter dated Sept. 12 and sent to Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, whose staff produced the report.

The letter, signed by senior director Vilmos Cserveny of the International Atomic Energy Agency, says the House committee's report is false in saying Iran is making weapons-grade uranium at an experimental enrichment site, when it has in fact produced material only in small quantities that is far below the level that can be used in nuclear arms.

The letter also says the report erroneously contends that IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei removed a senior nuclear inspector from the team investigating Iran's nuclear program "for concluding that the purpose of Iran's nuclear program is to construct weapons."

In fact, the inspector was sidelined on Tehran's request, and the Islamic republic had a right to ask for a replacement under agreements that govern all states' relationships with the agency, said the letter, calling the report's version "incorrect and misleading."

"In addition," says the letter, "the report contains an outrageous and dishonest suggestion that such removal might have been for `not having adhered to an unstated IAEA policy barring IAEA officials from telling the whole truth about the Iranian nuclear program.' "

The letter charges that a caption in the report under a picture of Iran's main nuclear site at Natanz falsely states that Tehran is "enriching uranium to weapons grade" with a small collection of centrifuges, the high-speed machines that are used to turn uranium into a fuel usable in nuclear power plants, or bombs.

The letter says the uranium was only enriched to 3.6 percent, a level suitable for producing power, but far short of the 90 percent or so commonly associated with fuel for weapons.

Jamal Ware, a spokesman for the House committee, confirmed they had received the letter and said the chairman had referred it to Reps. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and Rush Holt (D-N.J.) for review.

"All IAEA complains about is a photo caption. If you read the report, it's very clear that what it is saying is that Iran is working to develop the capability to enrich uranium to weapons grade, not that they have done so," Ware said. "They use a string of adjectives, while not pointing to any substantive criticism of the report. There are areas where we would disagree with them. A disagreement does not make what we say erroneous."

The committee's unclassified report, released in mid-August, was widely seen as an effort to prod U.S. intelligence agencies to be more aggressive in examining Iran's nuclear program, amid charges from conservatives that the mistakes made in assessing Iraq's programs before the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003 had bred an overly cautious atmosphere.

The report was overseen by Fredrick Fleitz, a former CIA officer who worked for John Bolton, the UN ambassador, when he was the State Department's leading hawk on Iran.